And Samsung could never be accused of being single-minded when it comes to operating systems – it is building up its own bada, but if none of its three Linux-based platforms delivers the smartphone domination it requires, it is getting close to WP7. Indeed, its new licensing/cooperation agreement on that front could bring Microsoft into bat for its new friend against the Apple lawsuits, a side benefit HTC is already indirectly seeing from its similar royalties pact.
But back to the newest Linux player on the block, Tizen, to be created from MeeGo and LiMO. Both systems looked great on paper as alternatives to the most vendor-controlled of open source OSs, Android. LiMO was designed to create a supplier-neutral platform which would support carrier customized mobile web experiences, supporting operator software initiatives like WAC (Wholesale Application Community).
MeeGo, even after Nokia‘s defection, vyed with webOS to be the most promising of the new breed of slimmed-down OSs suited to being embedded in a huge range of cloud-enabled devices, well beyond the handset. As such, both offerings had a distinctive proposition – but both lacked a wholehearted supporter.
Intel did, for a while, want to create an integrated silicon/OS platform and a framework it could control, to help drive its Atom processors into the mobile and embedded worlds. It merged its Moblin Linux OS with Nokia‘s Maemo to try to create the new “Wintel” for the mobile world. But Nokia lost interest when it adopted WP7, and Intel‘s recently announced close alliance with Google, to optimize Android for Atom, showed that the chip giant had conceded defeat and accepted that Windows and Android would be its main areas of activity.
Meanwhile, carrier supported platforms, from SavaJe to LiMO, have always suffered from the fact that cellcos can reach huge numbers of users and developers, but have no track record in creating a mobile experience which excites them. The main supporters of LiMO were handset makers with a significant business in designing customized devices for operators, so the OS thrived primarily in Japan, once its original flagship supporter, Vodafone, turned cold.
Samsung, never one to ignore an operating system, remained active and will direct the combined LiMO-MeeGo effort, now called Tizen, along with Intel. But this is no revival of the Intel/Nokia axis. Samsung tends to keep its hand in with most open operating systems, but we cannot see it putting significant resource behind Tizen.
It will remain involved on the off chance that the OS gains adoption in a particular market – most likely in-car systems, where MeeGo already has presence. But its most serious inhouse efforts center on bada, which it plans to open source next year; it has stepped up its commitment to WP7 in the light of a new licensing deal with Microsoft; and despite the legal attacks by Apple, it remains committed to Android.
The Android Galaxy range is so successful that, unless Apple succeeds in getting it banned on a wide basis, it will remain Samsung‘s primary offering, while it will have WP7 and bada as useful fall-back options – enabling it to pursue its usual policy of creating a hugely diverse product range to appeal to all user bases, and allowing it to feign indifference to Apple‘s threats. Amid all that, there will be little room left for Tizen.
Some observers are more confident about Tizen‘s future, and perhaps even see the OS performing the cross-platform role at Samsung that has also been envisaged for open source bada. Charles Hall of The Online Reporter writes: “Samsung could use the Tizen OS in smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. Such a move would erode Android‘s power in the mobile market because of Samsung‘s design skills and its global marketing might. Intel could bundle Tizen with its low cost, low power Atom processors to help it compete against ARM-designed processors in the mobile, smart consumer devices and automobile industry.”
But for now – at least until the combined release appears at the turn of the year - Tizen is in a similar position to webOS. Its main vendor supporters have pushed it onto the back burner, giving it little hope of making any inroads on Android and iOS, so its chief survival hopes rest on looking beyond phones and tablets. Both platforms are heavily focused on the new cloud world and the “internet of things,” when a vast array of gadgets will feature embedded connectivity, browser and a stripped-down OS. So they could find roles in vertical sectors, or in products which have not previously had an OS, or are off Google‘s radar.
A fully open Linux implementation could be valuable in markets where there is no dominant vendor driven platform. But while that might give Intel some useful influence in the embedded space, where it is starting to push Atom, it is effectively abandoning MeeGo in its primary mobile drive, in smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks – even though the initial statement from Tizen was still stressing consumer devices such as netbooks and smart TVs, rather than the more hopeful hunting grounds of emerging cloud systems.
The joint statement, from the LiMO Foundation and the Linux Foundation (which hosts MeeGo), said the first combined release was scheduled for the first quarter of next year, with devices to follow around midyear. A development environment will be created, based around HTML5, a vital way to smooth over the differences between OSs and speed migration to new ones.
Imad Sousou, director of Intel's Open Source Technology Center, wrote on the Meego.com blog: "We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn't just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been. Emphasizing HTML5 means that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers need not be as rigid, and can evolve with platform technology and can vary by market segment.”
Will carriers support Tizen?
The developer framework will also support WAC, betraying LiMO‘s roots as an attempt to provide an operator friendly alternative to Android and iOS. That bid gained credibility when Vodafone built its web platform, 360, around LiMO, but the cellco then switched its attention to Android and the independent OS‘s star faded.
Like Intel, the carriers realized that they were biting off more than they could chew by seeking to create their own OS alternative from scratch. It would be more realistic to use their combined market weight to support existing options which could still provide a counterbalance to Apple and Google. Hence the bizarre spectacle of the old dictator, Microsoft, positioning Windows Mobile and then WP7 as the cellcos‘ friend, the weapon against a too-powerful OS platform.
Despite all the ironies, some cellcos, especially Orange, have proved susceptible to these arguments and are willing to support WP7 in order to ensure a “third way” in the event that BlackBerry continues to decline and Android and iOS remain powerful. Last week, Verizon Communications‘ CEO Lowell McAdam said he expected a “third smartphone ecosystem” to rise within a year to break the Apple/Android duopoly.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, he named WP7, bada and BlackBerry as the viable contenders – not LiMO, even though that platform had built heavily on the JIL effort which Verizon, together with Vodafone and Softbank, co-sponsored. "The carriers are beginning to coalesce around the need for a third ecosystem," McAdam said. ―Over the next 12 months I think it will coalesce and you will start to see one emerge as a legitimate third ecosystem."
Samsung gets closer to Microsoft
It might not be WP7 – the OS still has to prove itself to consumers, and if they are not swayed by its innovative user interface, the carriers will stick with Android rather than sacrifice sales to politics. Samsung is hedging its bets, and it would, of course, get the greatest measure of control by seeing bada become the third way. Its plans to outsource the OS (see Wireless Watch September 21 2011) carry many risks of conflicts of interest, but they reveal the Korean giant‘s desire to expand its inhouse project into a broad industry platform.
But the Galaxy maker is also getting closer to Microsoft, thanks to a newly signed patent licensing deal. This is a major victory for the Windows player on three fronts. First, it now has the two largest Android OEMs, Samsung and HTC, signed up, making it harder for others to deny its IPR holdings in the Google OS, and exploding the myth that Android is “free.” Second, the deals not only change the cost base for Android, narrowing the gap with WP7, but also present the Microsoft offering as safer in terms of legal protection.
Third, it gets a closer alliance with Samsung, which was one of the first OEMs to launch WP7 handsets, but has placed the Omnia Windows family in a distant third place behind Android Galaxy and bada Wave in its list of priorities.
But the new licensing deal also includes “closer collaboration” on WP7, including co-development and co-marketing, giving Samsung another way to hedge its bets against serious damage from the Apple suits related to Android patents. The level of royalties in the Microsoft agreement are secret, but reports earlier this year indicated that the US firm was chasing up to $15 per device. We can guess that, in return for Samsung‘s effective declaration of enhanced support for WP7, it got a deal closer to the $5 figure reported for HTC, a long time Windows Mobile licensee and the market leader in Windows handsets – especially as the deal is actually a crosslicensing arrangement in which Samsung will have had its own IPR to trade.
None of this is good news for Nokia, whose planned smartphone comeback relies on being the dominant WP7 player and making the Microsoft platform into its own. Microsoft now has Android related patent licensing agreements with Acer, General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, ViewSonic and Wistron, as well as the two largest Android handset makers. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith wrote in a corporate blog post: “These two companies together accounted for more than half of all Android phones sold in the US over the past year. That leaves Motorola Mobility, with which Microsoft is currently in litigation, as the only major Android smartphone manufacturer in the US without a licence.” Of course, that legal action will become more politically significant if it is not settled before Google‘s $12.5bn acquisition of Motorola is finalized, probably early next year.
Nokia creates yet another mobile Linux OS
These days, it is not only a high end smartphone which needs a full OS, but featurephone platforms are taking on more advanced functionality too. Java, Brew and increasingly Android play here, and now Nokia is reported to be developing its own platform, Meltemi to replace its Series 40.
The low end strand of WP7, Tango, is in the wings, but Nokia‘s initial WP7 products will be high end. In the meantime, S40 is hugely installed but created for an age before the mobile web – and Nokia needs to consolidate its market share at the low end by adding value and providing a better user experience than the ultra-low cost competitors from China and Taiwan. Nokia has seen erosion of its admittedly huge share in key markets like India and China, as brands like Samsung and ZTE gain ground and as some featurephone users migrate to low cost smart devices running Android.
Nokia has a strategy to push WP7 into that affordable smartphone space, using the recently announced Tango variant for low end hardware, but that will not be a short term possibility in the mass market. In the meantime, it is devising Meltemi (the Greek word for summer winds) to add functionality for the base covered by its existing Series 40 software platform. According to The Wall Street Journal, the new initiative is led by EVP Mary McDowell, who heads the mobile phone business, although Nokia did not officially comment. It would only say: “Our mobile phones team has a number of exciting projects in the works that will help connect the next billion consumers to the internet.”
Featurephones accounted for about 47% of Nokia‘s device sales during the second quarter and CEO Stephen Elop announced a strategy to strengthen the attack on emerging markets and on Android. Like other OEMs, Nokia has effectively called the death of the traditional featurephone, except in some sub-$20 niches whose margins are too low even for the efficient Finnish giant. Instead, the low cost market will be based on semi-smart devices running Android, Java, Qualcomm Brew, and various flavors of Linux, which Nokia hopes will include Meltemi.
It is not really clear why Nokia did not adapt MeeGo, which remains an open source project within the company, for this effort, though possibly this would have been too politically complex given Intel‘s involvement. Meltemi could, instead, be a fully controlled platform to act as an heir to S40 and to run against low end Android and also Samsung‘s bada. Bada is targeted somewhat higher up the food chain, at midrange smartphones, but has the potential to be pushed out to featurephones, where the Korean vendor is also strong.
Meltemi will major on having a simple user interface and working with low end hardware and connectivity, but according to the Boy Genius Report blog, it will go well beyond its S40 predecessor in functionality, as users in emerging markets increasingly turn to the web. “Nokia‘s vision is seemingly to build an operating system with capability that reaches well beyond S40, but which can function on similar low cost hardware,” writes BGR‘s Zach Epstein. “This new platform will be fairly capable, but our understanding is that it will not be a full-fledged OS intended to compete with the likes of Android, iOS and Windows Phone.”